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Victor bit his lip, rolling a little closer. “When I was little, I thought everyone had a body like me. I didn’t go to nursery school or anything because my parents couldn’t find one that was willing to handle all my additional needs. So I just thought all kids had to have a dozen surgeries and physical therapy five days a week. I thought legs were like teeth.”
Oliver blinked. “Likewhat?”
“You know, like baby teeth. That my grown-up legs would eventually grow in, and I’d be able to do all the things that adults could do. Like walk on my own and not have spasms or be in pain all the time.”
Oliver sucked in a breath.
“Then I went to school,” Victor said. “In school, I just thought maybe I was behind everyone else. But it didn’t take me long to realize I was different.”
Oliver swallowed heavily. “They never told you?”
“When I asked,” Victor confessed, “my father said nothing and walked away from me. My mother was drunk, so she laughed at me and told me to stop making everyone so uncomfortable.”
Heart thudding on the edge of rage, Oliver asked, “How old were you?”
Victor’s mouth softened into a smile. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you look angry on my behalf. And you, sweet, sweet angel, don’t need to be.”
“How old?” Oliver repeated.
Victor traced fingers around his mouth before he said, “Six.”
Oliver covered his face with one hand and breathed out a heavy sigh. “Your parents are dicks. Were dicks? Are they—”
“They’re alive. We speak twice a year. They’ve retired to Sardinia and occasionally remember they have a son.” Victor stroked Oliver’s jaw until he dropped his hand. “They can’t hurt me anymore.”
“But they did. They hurt you when you were small and vulnerable. That’s not…who does that?”
“I think we could both ask a lot of people that very same question,” Victor told him. “But the answers won’t change anything. We’re here now.”
Oliver let those three words settle in his chest. They were. Not for much longer now, but that didn’t matter because what they had would be more powerful than anything Oliver had ever experienced in his life. Letting go would kill off a piece of him—there was no stopping that—but he wouldn’t trade it for the world.
“Kiss me,” he told Victor.
Victor smiled and did exactly as he asked, keeping it slow, steady, and deep until they were both desperate for air. When they broke apart, Victor knocked their foreheads together. “We should watch the stars.”
Oliver didn’t answer, but he didn’t disagree. He switched off the lamp, and then they moved everything around again so they could lie on their backs with their heads near the open hatch, and Oliver let his eyes relax for a bit, all the bright specks of stars fading into a blur. He lifted his hand and traced a shape between a cluster, and he wondered aloud if that’s how all the constellations were invented.
“Two lovers telling stories,” Victor murmured.
“I wouldn’t be any good at it. I love stories, but I’m not clever enough to write my own.”
Victor hummed. “Neither am I.”
Oliver wondered if maybe they were both terribly wrong about themselves, but before he could muse on it further, a bright streak shot across the sky. It only took a second—there and then gone. His heart started to hammer in his chest.
“Make a wish,” Victor told him.
God, he didn’t want to. That wasn’t fair.
“First falling star of the night. You have to make a wish,” Victor said.
Oliver closed his eyes, and he didn’t give words to what he wanted. It was a formless desperation made up of all the things he knew he was never going to be allowed to have but his heart was desperate for anyway. He sent it off into the heavens, then opened his eyes once more and saw two more meteors streaking above them like they were telling him his one wish wasn’t special. That the universe didn’t have time for just him.
He turned when he felt a touch on his cheek, and Victor was so close all he’d have to do was lean in half an inch and they’d be kissing again.
